Sharad Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, Sify Infinit Spaces
India’s data centre sector is at an inflection point, driven by surging hyperscaler demand, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and the imperative to expand beyond metropolitan corridors. In a recent panel discussion at tele.net’s 9th Annual Conference on Data Centres in India, held in Mumbai in April 2026, Sharad Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, Sify Infinit Spaces, spoke on infrastructure longevity, geographic spread, consolidation and sustainability. Edited excerpts from his remarks…
Scale and market positioning
Sify Infinit Spaces has an operational capacity of roughly 200 MW across 15 data centres in seven cities in India. It focuses on three distinct market tiers, hyperscale AI campus deployments, enterprise and edge, and currently holds a 15 per cent market share. The intent is to cater to the full spectrum of demand as it evolves.
Building for the next generation
There is a coexistence between what has already been built and what is coming. In an environment where capacity doubles every year or two, what exists today begins to look increasingly small against what will arrive. The real question is whether the infrastructure being built right now is suited for the next generation of graphics processing units (GPUs), and whether what we plan today will remain relevant for 10-20 years. Those are open questions we are actively working through. For older facilities built 25 years ago, we are evaluating whether to continue with them, or exit or refurbish them to handle high-density cloud workloads, if not AI workloads directly. Liquid cooling, theoretically, can be retrofitted into older facilities, though they were never designed for it.
Geographic spread is inevitable
Mumbai has a sanctioned data centre demand of 5.6 GW from Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited alone. This is far too large to be served from one metropolitan area. NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin reference architecture requires 250 acres of land for 150-200 MW of capacity. This is not something that can be deployed in Mumbai or any dense metro. It must go inland. Compare this with the US, where data centre capacity was historically concentrated in northern Virginia and Washington state, but is now spreading to Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. India has four times the US population and its own demand curve to serve. The constraint will be energy. Bringing sufficient, reliable energy to these inland locations is the central problem to solve over the next decade and beyond.
Almost all hyperscalers we host in India are US-headquartered. They self-build in the US. Yet, in recent quarters, 7 GW worth of orders have been placed on co-location operators. The ability to execute, to actually bring infrastructure to the market during this transformational period, is what differentiates participants.
Heading towards consolidation
At present, there are somewhere between 20 and 25 significant data centre operators in India. As the industry moves along the maturity curve, consolidation tends to follow. This is a capital-heavy business, and capital dynamics drive consolidation. It will happen, likely more towards the later stages of the maturity curve.
Sustainability in practice
The data centre industry has adapted meaningfully towards sustainability. The lowest-hanging fruit was renewable energy, and I would say nearly every operator has begun pursuing power purchase agreements (PPAs) for solar and wind. We have more than 300 MW of PPAs in place, of which approximately 128 MW is already wheeling in. As loads increase, we are ensuring that 60 per cent of our energy comes from renewable sources.
Customers, particularly hyperscalers, want maximum renewable content from us, because it reduces what they must offset through virtual PPAs.
On water usage, the industry decided long ago to avoid water-based chillers and evaporative cooling. As a result, water usage effectiveness is not even a measurement parameter in India. We are also working with the Indian Green Building Council to ensure all our facilities achieve gold or platinum certification on energy consumption. We received an ESG rating of 79 out of 100 from a rating agency and are working to improve that score meaningfully. A 100 per cent green data centre is possible, but it carries a premium. The moment for it will arrive as hyperscaler and customer expectations continue to rise.
